Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

[Padraig]

[QUOTE=Padraig;688706]... though you've read the poems before, a new collection breathes new life into them...

Höfn

The three-tongued glacier has begun to melt.
What will we do, they ask, when boulder-milt
Comes wallowing across the delta flats

And the mile-deep shag-ice begins to move?
I saw it, ridged and rock-set, from above,
Undead grey-gristed earth-pelt, aeon-scruff,

And feared its coldness that still seemed enough
To iceblock the plane window dimmed with breath,
Deepfreeze the seep of adamantine tilth

And every warm, mouthwatering word of mouth.

Seamus Heaney

from District and Circle, 2005

[Padraig]

Today is the anniversary of Heaney's death. I duly went to visit his grave, a practice I have always otherwise studiously avoided. Today, as I acknowledged Heaneys fifth anniversary, I gave some thought to my mother who died suddenly on the 30 August 1953. I chose a poem* from 100 Poems which recalled happy times for the poet and which also tied in with a dimly remembered last seaside holiday in Donegal with my mother and sister, thoughts prompted by the solitary graveside reading.
Later I booked tickets for the readings from 100 Poems in November, and for a performance by Iarla O Lionaird and Steve Cooney in late September.

* The Singer's House
from Field Work 1979

[Padraig]

I had thought that Heaney's last poem was In Time for his granddaughter Siofra, written in August shortly before his death. I now find that he put the finishing touches to a poem even later than that. Here it is:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/03/seamus-heaney-last-poem-national-gallery-ireland-anthology

[johncorrigan]

I had thought that Heaney's last poem was In Time for his granddaughter Siofra, written in August shortly before his death. I now find that he put the finishing touches to a poem even later than that. Here it is:


https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...land-anthology

Thank you for the article, Padraig. I hadn't thought of Heaney having a last poem. For me, reading 'Banks of a Canal' is a great exercise in how to see. I love the way Heaney guides you, suggesting possible viewpoints whether sitting or stravaiging, reflecting on what might be there even when there's nobody watching, and what is just out of sight; but in the end only you can know what you see when you look.

[Padraig]

stravaiging

Nice word, John.
And another, in the poem itself - coolth.

Both new to me.

[Constantbee]

Song

A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the bye-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.

Seamus Heaney

from Field Work, 1979

Only just found this. Thanks Padraig. The autumn being what it is I just had to forward this to an Irish friend who's going through a rough patch at the moment It's one of those tricky situations where one doesn't really know how best to help. I think this just might, though

[Padraig]

Only just found this. Thanks Padraig. The autumn being what it is I just had to forward this to an Irish friend who's going through a rough patch at the moment It's one of those tricky situations where one doesn't really know how best to help. I think this just might, though

Thank you bee.

[Padraig]

Mid-Term...holiday... elections...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YgzE60gMW4

[johncorrigan]

Mid-Term...holiday... elections...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YgzE60gMW4

Gets you every time, Padraig! Thank you!

[Padraig]

Gets you every time, Padraig! Thank you!

Go ndeana se maith duit - (May it do good to you ) - You're welcome! (I need a fada on the first a in deana, and the e in se)

I'm going to Bellaghy on Friday night for a reading from 100 Poems. No doubt that one will come up again, and that's OK.

I have enclosed a bit of the programme for November at Bellaghy. You'll notice the Soldier's Tale which was featured on In Tune last week, but when I tried to book it was sold out.

https://seamusheaneyhome.ticketsolve.com/shows

It didn't.

[Padraig]

I was reading the Sunday paper and came across the word 'coeval', which sparked a memory:

from Clearances

7

In the last minutes he said more to her
Almost than in all their life together.
'You'll be in New Row on Monday night
And I'll come up for you and you'll be glad
When I walk in the door... isn't that right?'
His head was bent down to her propped-up head.
She could not hear but we were overjoyed.
He called her good and girl. Then she was dead,
The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned
And we all knew one thing by being there.
The space we stood around had been emptied
Into us to keep, it penetrated
Clearances that suddenly stood open.
High cries were felled and a pure change happened.


8

I thought of walking round and round a space
Utterly empty, utterly a source
Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place
In our front hedge above the wallflowers.
The white chips jumped and jumped and skited high.
I heard the hatchet's differentiated
Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh
And collapse of what luxuriated
Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all.
Deep planted and long gone, my coeval
Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole.
Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere,
A soul ramifying and forever
Silent, beyond silence listened for.

The Haw Lantern 1987

[johncorrigan]

The weather was a touch windy wintry yesterday with a spot of hailstone input!

Hailstones.

I

My cheek was hit and hit:
sudden hailstones
pelted and bounced on the road.

When it cleared again
something whipped and knowledgeable
had withdrawn

and left me there with my chances.
I made a small hard ball
of burning water running from my hand

just as I make this now
out of the melt of the real thing
smarting into its absence.

II

To be reckoned with, all the same,
those brats of showers.
The way they refused permission,

rattling the classroom window
like a ruler across the knuckles,
the way they were perfect first

and then in no time dirty slush.
Thomas Traherne had his orient wheat
for proof and wonder

but for us, it was the sting of the hailstones
and the unstingable hands of Eddie Diamond
foraging in the nettles.

III

Nipple and hive, bite lumps,
small acorns of the almost pleasurable
intimated and disallowed

when the shower ended
and everything said wait.
For what? For forty years

to say there, there you had
the truest foretaste of your aftermath -
in that dilation

when the light opened in silence
and a car with wipers going still
laid perfect tracks in the slush.

Seamus Heaney

[Padraig]

In Stepping Stones Heaney was asked about his exposure to the stage at St.Columbs' College, and whether it assisted in his public speaking and poetry reading.

As a speaker perhaps, in that I'd had the experience of being up there in front of an audience and surviving it. But as a reader, no. I think it wasn't until the 1970s that I began to read convincingly, with some kind of personal rightness. The one who helped me in that regard was Ted Hughes. Ted held fast to the pitch of his first voice, stayed generally faithful to his first accent. Obviously, the accent was less Yorkshire than it would have been had he not gone south to Cambridge and London, but it still kept close to the cadencing of the Danelaw. He managed to sound out his inwardness without crossing the line towards ingratiation. When he spoke his poems, it was as if he was retrieving them rather than reciting them. Hearing him made me want to do likewise.

Stepping Stones Interviews with Seamus Heaney. Dennis O'Driscoll 2008

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A poem from Crossings to commemorate St Brigid's Day (with apologies if this has appeared on the Thread before):

On St. Brigid's Day the new life could be entered
By going through her girdle of straw rope
The proper way for men was right leg first
Then right arm and right shoulder, head, then left
Shoulder, arm and leg.
Women drew it down
Over the body and stepped out of it
The open they came into by these moves
Stood opener, hoops came off the world
They could feel the February air
Still soft above their heads and imagine
The limp rope fray and flare like wind-born gleanings
Or an unhindered goldfinch over ploughland.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... apologies if this has appeared on the Thread before ...

It hadn't! And neither had Heaney's other St Brigid poem, A Brigid's Girdle, so ...

Last time I wrote I wrote from a rustic table
Under magnolias in South Carolina
As blossoms fell on me, and a white gable
As clean-lined as the prow of a white liner

Bisected sunlight in the sunlit yard.
I was glad of the early heat and the first quiet
I'd had for weeks. I heard the mocking bird
And a delicious, articulate

Flight of small plinkings from a dulcimer
Like feminine rhymes migrating to the north
Where you faced the music and the ache of summer
And earth's foreknowledge gathered in the earth.

Now it's St Brigid's Day and the first snowdrop
In County Wicklow, and this a Brigid's Girdle
I'm plaiting for you, an airy fairy hoop
(Like one of those old crinolines they'd trindle),

Twisted straw that's lifted in a circle
To handsel and to heal, a rite of spring
As strange and lightsome and traditional
As the motions you go through going through the thing.